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Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Don Juan, Op. 20
Composed: 1887-88
Scored for 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, glockenspiel, harp, and strings.
Duration: approximately 17 minutes

When Richard Strauss came of age, it seemed as if everything had already been done. But just as with physics at the turn of the century, this also meant the time was ripe for a breakthrough. Strauss made his own quantum leap with the sensational debut in 1889 of Don Juan. Here was a bold young genius declaring his independence from the overshadowing titans of the musical past. Don Juan crackles with the super-confident energy and technique of a composer who knows he has found his unmistakable voice. And with this piece Strauss restored to the concert hall the kind of expressive intensity many—following Wagner’s cue—claimed had a future only in the opera house.

Strauss would of course himself evolve into one of the greatest of opera composers. Yet it was with his initial series of tone poems that Strauss first developed his expertise for the art of telling stories and painting characters in musical terms. Such tone poems as Don Juan employed brilliantly imaginative orchestration, audacious harmonies, and thematic development to tease out musings often inspired by philosophical or literary works.

The Don Juan in question here isn’t the cynical libertine of Mozart and Da Ponte’s opera. The source is, rather, a verse play by the restlessly troubled Romantic poet Nikolaus Lenau. His Don Juan is a tormented, self-conscious figure; he breathes the same air as Lord Byron’s Manfred. Longing for a love that can never be fulfilled, this Don Juan deliberately seeks out death by refusing to defend himself in a duel with the Commendatore’s son.

Strauss used to brag that he was able to set a pint of beer or even a grocery list to music, and his technical wizardry could indeed produce extraordinarily inventive evocations of extra-musical phenomena. But what Strauss is after isn’t virtuosic musical illustration—it’s the expression of feelings Don Juan evokes. Strauss begins matters with one of his trademark upward themes, a musical code for the always-seeking, idealistic hero. Its dotted rhythm adds to the adrenaline rush of energy and passion. It’s as if Strauss brings us inside the Don’s actual state of mind. But one of his tricks is the subtle turning of point of view. An oboe solo introduces a new, ravishingly lyrical section: now the point of view seems to have shifted to one of the Don’s conquests. The horns later bring us back into the Don’s world as they resound with a powerful, heroic new theme. Yet their very heroism seems to protest too much.

—Thomas May

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64
Composed: 1838-1844
Scored for solo violin, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
Duration: approximately 26 minutes

The Violin Concerto is, too often, taken for granted—as if this beloved music had always been there. In fact, its birthing cost Mendelssohn great effort. Even at the height of his powers as an all-around active musician (constant tours as performer and conductor alongside his compositional projects), Mendelssohn worried himself into a state of nervousness about getting things just right. That the result would become prized as one of the finest (and most imitated) gems in the concerto repertoire didn’t make the process any easier.

This may, in part, explain the work’s unusually long gestation. Mendelssohn intended as early as 1838 to write a concerto for the violin virtuoso and teacher Ferdinand David, a close friend since the composer’s youth. David was also concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, which Mendelssohn conducted. A restless aspect was integral to the concerto’s original conception: “[A concerto] in E minor runs through my head,” the composer wrote to David, “the beginning of which gives me no peace.”

Mendelssohn went on to other tasks in the meantime, but eventually came back to his original plan and completed the Violin Concerto in September 1844. He corresponded at length with David to work through aspects of technique and questions of balance between the soloist and the orchestra. This close collaboration between composer and performer in itself set a pattern that’s been repeated in the creation of numerous subsequent concertos.

The first movement is nearly equal in length to the other two combined. Yet its momentum of restless passion (that beginning which had haunted its composer from the start) is exquisitely proportioned: the restlessness returns in fainter echo in the middle section of the songful Andante, only to be transformed into the vivacious, delirious energy of the finale (in Mendelssohn’s signature scherzo style). As a result, the whole never feels top-heavy.

As in Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, Mendelssohn pulls us right into the middle of things—and with what economy: a measure and a half, punctuated by timpani and double bass pizzicatos, sets up the turbulent backdrop over which the violin traces its yearning main theme. The soloist’s sudden entrance—without the expected orchestral curtain-raising—is the first of several innovations Mendelssohn employs in his concerto. Most famous is his placement of the cadenza as a link between the development and recapitulation instead of near the end. He also joins each of the three movements: a sustained bassoon note rises a half step to prepare for the Andante, while an interlude following the second movement reprises the contours of the opening theme before the gear abruptly shifts, with fanfares, into the sprightly rhythms of the finale.

All this careful planning fortifies a sense of organic cohesion. It gives unity to the music’s larger emotional arc, from its opening passionate intensity to the giddy high spirits with which it closes. Throughout, Mendelssohn continually rethinks the soloist’s relationship to the orchestra—and to the act of performance. Note, for example, how surprisingly the first-movement cadenza steals upon us, while the unbridled presto ending the movement comes across not as merely show-off virtuosity but gives an emotionally compelling edge to what precedes it.

—Thomas May